Democratic values, oligarchies and security

US President Donald Trump’s retort on the use of torture to get information from terrorists, and the defence of the Nigerian SGF by the Presidency on the ground of fair hearing in the Senate, form the kernel of our discussion today. The two issues are concerns about democratic values, the rule of law, and the promotion of the concerns and interests of the ruling oligarchies in both nations.

They collectively show how far democracy and its claim in liberal democracies to be the government of the people by the people and for the people can be a mere slogan or rhetoric, that makes a mockery of democracy itself while creating insecurity which in itself in an anathema to the idea and concept of democracy.

I was impressed by the spirit and candor with which Donald Trump spelt out his policy not to rule out the use of waterboarding, a form of torture introduced by the Bush Administration after 9/11 alongside the building of Guatanamo Bay in Cuba as a high security prison for captured terrorists. Waterboarding makes victims feel they are drowning and they want to talk and give out information they would not give out under normal interrogation.

The Obama Administration cancelled this and Trump is reinstating it because he said it is productive in terms of actionable information provided from its use. To Trump, it is like returning fire for fire because of ISIS use of the ‘medieval tactic‘ of beheading people for being either Christians or Muslims and showing such macabre scenes on videos on the internet and global TV. Since Trump knew he was being trapped on his utterances he said he would abide by whatever his Defence Secretary and NSA decided on the matter as he would not like to break any international law.

But left to him, the playing ground is not level when ISIS is allowed to behead people with impunity and people scoff at the use of water boarding against terrorists. To me, Trump was thinking and talking aloud on an issue that has agitated the minds of not only the people who voted for him but a large percentage of peace loving people in the world especially Muslims who have recoiled and denounced such beheading, and ISIS, as un –Islamic. What Trump has articulated amounts to saying that at a point security is more important than an enemies rights, the rules of war and the rules of engagement in any conflict more especially a war.

Indeed one can say that his argument is that in practicing beheading in modern times ISIS has broken the rules and a deterrence needs to be put in place to redress the balance of terror against ISIS. Which really is an argument that must flow from the failure of the Obama Administration to contain ISIS by promising to withdraw US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and giving a deadline which US enemies simply waited to pass before resuming hostilities. The same wrong signals were sent on the cancellation of water boarding and the end of Guatanamo Bay although the latter was not accomplished at the end of the Obama Administration. What is necessary to ponder over in Trump’s new approach is the arrogance inherent in both the cancellation of waterboarding as an instrument of war and the gathering of intelligence. There is a saying that everything is fair and fine in a war.

In cancelling water boarding before, the Obama Administration was arrogant in thinking it could win the war on terrorism without resorting to such tactics, even in the face of beheading. The anti boarding policy was popular then because Americans and Europeans were in an anti war, anti intervention, and isolationist mood at the beginning of the Obama Administration. However the attendant insecurity created at the end of that Administration and the ensuing migration from the Middle East into the US and EU have created the same sense of danger and insecurity leading to the allegation of porous borders and walls, as well as the need to make America Great again which also is arrogant but is a message that the American people have bought.

That is what has put Trump in a position to say what he has said on waterboarding and it does not matter what the world thinks about it or its legality as terrorists do not know that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands. All the same, I feel it sends a potent a message to all terrorists who kill innocent people any where, anyway including the use of small girls as suicide bombers, that America has awoken from its arrogant slumber of thinking that global terrorism can be contained with only one eye open. Which was a terrible and agonizing illusion that was the hall mark of the Obama Administration and a tragedy of a foreign strategy and policy which fortified ISIS and spawned the immigration to Europe that has created the xenophobia which then created Brexit and now Donald Trump and the return of torture in the war against terrorism.

In Nigeria’s popular war on corruption a land mark or watershed on its success was reached this week. This happened when the Presidency replied that the SGF was not given fair hearing by the Senate Committee that found him culpable on grounds of conflicting or undeclared interest in the handling of funds meant for the welfare of the Internally Displaced Persons -IDP – in the theater of the war against Boko Haram in North East of Nigeria. Under the rule of law the right of fair hearing is a fundamental human right because an accuse is presumed innocent until otherwise proven in a court of law. This is our law inherited from the Common Law of our Colonial master, Britain.

It is unlike the French law which assumes an accuse is guilty as charged and can be detained at the pleasure of the state until he proves his innocence in open court. Both colonial masters however respect the right of fair hearing. However the SGF versus the Senate Trial is not a court case but a case of a confrontation between two arms of government in Nigeria’s powerful presidential system. Indeed it is a battle between the Government which is the Executive arm of the presidential system and the Senate which is the legislative arm. In this particular instance the two arms are behaving like an oligarchy that is above the law with each pursuing its diverse goal.

The goal of the senate is to get the SGF dumped by the Administration even though they know he is a key member of the war against corruption and denting his image without trial or fair hearing is bound to tarnish not to talk of the integrity of the war against corruption. But it is not the duty of the Presidency to defend the SGF on the grounds of fair hearing as that is a duty of a lawyer in a court of law or any duly constituted investigative body on the matter. Neither is it the duty of the senate to be both accuser and judge in accusing the SGF and asking for his removal as that too is against the principle of natural justice.

It is my considered view that both the Senate and the Presidency have constituted themselves in to oligarchies in the Nigerian political system which have usurped the functions of the judiciary which seem to have into fallen into a slumber following the arrest of some judges, with millions of dollars and naira in their various residences. Although nobody can be said to be above the law in Nigeria there is no denying that the SGF deserves a fair trial or investigation of the allegations against him and that the defence on his behalf is oligarchic and self serving of the presidency.

Just as the spirited attack on his reputation albeit to tarnish the war on corruption is equally unjust and oligarchic of a Senate that is always at daggers drawn with a presidency that is one heartedly waging a war on corruption. Either way the law in Nigeria presumes that all Nigerians are equal before the law and that even election into public offices to make laws and govern, do not mean that those involved can constitute themselves into an oligarchy above the law in pursuit of their class or functional interest at the expense of the rule of law. That is making an ass of the law and our democracy and those who live in glass houses should learn not to throw stones. Once again long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.